A poem for Thursday

I've been dreaming of a complete summer off, thinking about university and the end of Trinity term and that vast stretch of summer that usually meant epic travel, student squalor and carefree languor all at once.

I skyped with my parents on the weekend and Dad asked me if I'm excited to come home and I was surprised to hear myself tell him I can't wait. And I realized the depth of my craving for home, for the sea too. And today's Three of a kind was of course inspired by Italy, where I would love to spend a summer. And if you've seen Il Postino, you'll understand why I ended up thinking of Pablo Neruda too.

The Sea
I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

It’s not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from a sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.

What it taught me before, I keep. It’s air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.

It seems a small thing for a young man,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.